


00 Poltergeist

by SvengoolieCat



Series: Sven's 007Fest '17 Scribbles [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Skyfall, Drama, Ghosts, Ghouls, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Poltergeists, Seers, Silva being a creep, Snark, Supernatural - Freeform, but that doesn't mean he's gone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2018-11-22 11:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11379216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SvengoolieCat/pseuds/SvengoolieCat
Summary: Anon Prompt Fill #40: Ghost storiesJames Bond might be dead, but that doesn't mean he's gone. (Resting in peace is for wusses) MI6's deadliest agent returns when they need him the most and teams up with the new Quartermaster to unravel the new threat to the agency.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 

Q got his promotion on the battlefield, so to speak. The blast that obliterated the higher offices of the MI6 headquarters had happened while he was elsewhere, having decided to take his lunch at a nearby café. Otherwise he’s not entirely sure that he wouldn’t have numbered among the dead himself.

The past few months had been weird, though. The office had been blown up, the Parliament was baying for M’s head, talk of disbanding the 00s sounded more serious than ever, and all hell broke loose. The loss of 007 in Istanbul had been the beginning. Q hadn’t known the man personally, just seen him in passing. He remembered bright blue eyes, very short blond hair, and a face not unlike M’s ugly figurine. Not ugly, not pretty, but kind of striking anyway.

Q met with 006 to send him off to Shanghai with his gun and radio and then decided to spend a few moments in the peace and quiet afforded him by the museum. He’d been working 70 hours a week since taking over as Quartermaster, and thought if he took a half an hour to stare at some paintings that the world probably wouldn’t end.

The room holding Turner’s _Fighting_ _Temeraire_ was empty but for one person sitting on the lone bench in the middle of the room. Not surprising that people were avoiding the place. The room was frigid, like their environmental controls were set wrong, and if Q had been less tired, he’d have pinpointed the reason more quickly.

But he was tired, and perhaps a bit lonely, and so he sank down on bench a respectable distance from the man.

“Always makes me a little melancholy, a grand old warship being ignominiously hauled away for scrap,” he said. “What do you see?”

“A bloody big ship,” came the irritated reply. “Excuse me.”

Q looked over at the man who was halfway to standing when the man suddenly froze and sat back down, astonished.

Q stared back, suddenly confronted by a memory of the old 007. He wasn’t alive, Q knew that, but here he was, still wearing the grey suit he presumably died in, a bullet hole above his collar bone and the other through a lung. He even looked a bit damp, which, according to the report he’d perished in the river and his body was never recovered. Yeah, 007 was really, really dead.

“007,” Q said. The man’s impossible blue eyes widened. “I believe I’m your Quartermaster.”

What. No. Q had no idea what possessed him to say anything, let alone anything as dangerous as that. Q needed to shut up, go home, and go to bed. The man was dead. Do not catch his attention, do not engage. Q had no business claiming him, what was wrong with him?

The man had the gall to snort. “Quartermaster? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Why, because I’m not wearing a lab coat?”

“You still have spots.”

“Well, you have blood on your suit, so you’re hardly one to talk of spots.”

“Hm,” 007 hummed. “Dry cleaning is hell when you’re dead, Q.”

Q closed his eyes at the bad joke and the man.

It had been years since he’d last seen a proper ghost this clearly. He’d taught himself to shut down his extra senses years ago, since his parents had caught him talking to his dead Gran and had hauled him off to the psychiatrists. He usually saw things out of the corner of his eye, and went out of his way to avoid graveyards, crime scenes, and hospitals. He kept cats, because not only did they see the same things he did, they were pretty good barometers of the supernatural.

And yet, here was the infamous 007, breaking through all his defenses and manifesting so completely that Q had to look twice to double-check that he was talking to a dead man. And 007 knew he was dead, which in Q’s experiences, meant that he was dealing with a) a very powerful ghost, and b) one with a very strong sense of self and purpose.

Shit. Shit shit shit, that never meant good things. He wasn’t entirely certain, but there was a very good chance that the combination of unfinished business, violent death, and the fact that James Bond was a human wrecking ball in real life meant that he wasn’t dealing with a ghost so much as a fledgling poltergeist.

“Bond, James Bond,” 007 said, smiling. The expression changed his face—eased some of the tiredness away with a flirtatious spark.

Q blinked at him. “Yes, your reputation is legendary.”

007 beamed at Q, and suddenly blinked out.

Ghosts did that, sometimes. They were there, and then they weren’t. But as the room warmed, Q had the unsettling feeling that he hadn’t seen the last of Bond.

 

 

Q was right.

After the meeting in the museum, Q didn’t see Bond quite so clearly again. He tried convincing himself that it was all a fever dream of an overworked, overtired mind, except that Bond seemed to have fixated on Q, perhaps even more than he fixated on M.

Honestly, Q felt like he was sharing custody of a particularly annoying child. Bond seemed to find Q’s Scrabble mug hilarious and constantly moved it around. If he wasn’t doing that, he was chilling the tea with his very icy presence. (This did not endear him to Q, who did not relish drinking iced tea like a barbarian.) The minions of Q-branch all complained that the air conditioning was freezing, and even the heat from the computers couldn’t make a difference. Q blamed it on the tunnels and being underground, and ignored the ghostly chuckles in his ear.

Q got used to seeing things out of the corner of his eye. To seeing the shadowy form of a stocky, muscular man leaning against walls just inside his peripheral. To feeling the chill up his back that meant Bond was, once again, shadowing him. It wasn’t all obnoxious. The man had been a damn good agent when he was alive, and sometimes had some good advice to offer. He took a keen interest in 006 progress with capturing Patrice. No wonder there. If he’d been alive, he’d have been the one on that assignment.

Tanner appeared in Q’s line of sight. He looked unruffled as ever and held out a laptop to Q.

“006 is back and brought you a present. Also, M requests your presence. Apparently Silva wants to speak to you.”

“Why?”

Tanner looked grim. “I’m going to assume nothing good. You don’t have to come, but M wanted to see how he reacts.”

Q felt the chill of Bond’s presence at his side. He adjusted his glasses. “If she wants me there, then I will go.”

“Excellent.” Tanner smiled. “Damn, it’s cold down here, isn’t it?”

“If he wants cold, he should try Siberia in February,” Bond grumbles. “I don’t like this, Q.”

“He’s locked up securely,” Q said.

“He is,” Tanner agreed. “This one is a former 00, with a reputation for being both slippery and slimy. Rather like the late, great James Bond, with less of a conscience.”

“There’s a compliment just full of knuckles,” Bond said, flicking Tanner’s ear and smiling when the man flinches.

This was the most solid Q had seen him since they met. Bond ranged at his side, close enough to touch. It was not comforting…if a poltergeist was feeling uneasy enough that he was willing to throw around that much energy, Q didn’t see anything good coming of the next half hour of his life.

Whatever Q was expecting of the holding area, the melodramatic, impractical glass cage was not it. It looked like the sort of cage that Magneto would be kept in. And the man inside it struck Q as being particularly…off. When Silva pulled his jaw out of his collapsing face like a grim party trick, Q thought he understood.

Silva didn’t die right. Whatever had been human or salvageable had died betrayed and brokenhearted years ago.

The man grinned at Q and put his face back together, laughing softly. Q missed the entire conversation between Silva and M, and numbly turned to go with M and Tanner when it appeared nothing more was to be gained from the meeting.

“Wait, Quartermaster,” the Spaniard called out. “Just a few moments of your time.”

Q looked at M, who narrowed her eyes and nodded. She cleared the room with Tanner leaving Q alone to face the monster in the jar. Well, not entirely alone. Bond was a simmering presence with him, outwardly implacable but sending off power like heat waves off a tarmac.

“Well, well. Not what I expected from the new Quartermaster,” Silva crooned. His attention shifted away from Q. “Hello, Bond. You look well for a dead man.”

“So do you,” Bond said. His face was impassive, but Q thought Bond had caught onto Silva’s wrongness as well, judging by the way the man stood just slightly between Q and Silva. “Shame about your face, though.”

Silva laughed, delighted. “Dear Mr. Bond. So worried that Mother still loves you best. Look at us both. Dead men left in her wake.”

“Queen and country,” Bond said.

“Queen and country,” Silva agrees. “And Quartermaster, too. My, my, James. Have you found someone else to protect?”

“What do you want, Silva?” Q asked. “I’m busy.”

Silva’s face changed and Q could see the veneer crack just enough to see the dark thing beneath. “Do you know what I am, Quartermaster?” Silva’s hand flattened against the glass, fingers flexing like Q’s cats’ paws when they were unsheathing their claws.

_Ghoul_ , a small voice whispered in the back of Q’s mind.

“I know you’re wasting my time and talking to thin air,” Q said. “I’m sure you don’t need an audience to be weird.” He turned to leave.

The sound of a fist thudding against glass made him flinch. Just as fast, he felt the strange electricity as Bond’s own body briefly pressed against his. The poltergeist shoved him back and faced Silva in his stead. Q had the odd experience of looking through Bond at Silva. Not surprising, as Bond was still newly dead and had been throwing off a lot of power to make a point. He was starting to shimmer like a heat wave.

“Don’t play dumb, Quartermaster. We are all cursed. Or gifted. It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose.” Silva said, all charm disappearing. His eyes were dark, flat, shark-like, and he pulled his lips back in a snarl that showed too many teeth, never mind that half of them were false. His face looked like caved in death’s head. “The ghoul, the poltergeist, and the seer. All together! Destiny.”

“If you say so. Have a nice day,” Q said, and left. He expected another violent recall, but Silva just sat down on the bench and laughed.

That was far worse.

“What did he want?” asked M. Of course she hadn’t left but lingered just beyond the door.

Q put his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling. It was a conscious effort to relax his shoulders. “That man is a lunatic,” he said, and walked away. He had a laptop to decrypt.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Q fully entrenched himself back in his makeshift Q-Branch. There was a comfort in the stark white lighting, the clicking of computer keys, and the futuristic technology. A part of Q was rather delighted by the set up…it had rather a Star Trek bridge feel, with his minions all quietly monitoring their screens and the giant, theater-sized viewscreen at the head of the room. Away from that stark glass jar, Q’s chest loosened up and breathing became easier. Whatever else he was, had been, or will be, Q was the mostly benevolent Overlord of Geeks, and this was his domain.

The laptop remained where he left it at his standing desk. Q approached it, and hovered for a moment. He knew time was of the essence (when wasn’t it) but he was loathe to touch the thing. He leaned on the stainless steel desk, hands to either side of the laptop and took some deep breaths. MI6 didn’t pay him for his psychic misgivings, they paid him to crack any computer system they aimed him at. For MI6, ghosties and ghoulies and things that went bump in the night were childish fantasies. His fingers drummed a quick staccato, called for a refill of his tea, and opened the laptop.

Engrossed as he was, he didn’t notice when the air got colder.

“This is a bloody Rubik cube that fights back,” he muttered, as the code changed again. The whole thing was a godawful tangle and as soon as he figured out one piece, it twisted away from him and morphed into something else. “There are six people in the world who can work protocols like this.”

“Can you break it?” asked Bond.

The voice in his ear didn’t startle him. Q was too busy being piqued. “I invented it,” he said, irritated. Having his own invention turned on him was galling, particularly since it appeared Silva had improved on the protocols. The laptop wasn’t a gift from Alec Trevelyan being helpful in grabbing something that looked useful, it was a bloody gauntlet from Silva who had nothing better to do with his time than tweak their noses.

Out of the corner of his eye, Q saw Bond crack a fond smile. The poltergeist looked tired, but still alert.

“Wait,” Bond called. “There.”

Q looked where Bond indicated. Granborough Station. Abandoned subway station.

“Aren’t you just full of helpfulness,” Q said.

“I go _outside_ , Q. And I talk to people.”

Any snarky comeback Q was going to mutter was forgotten as the trapdoors in Q-branch sprang open.

“What the hell is that?” Q demanded. “Why is it doing that?”

His minions looked blankly at him, and at each other, and back at him.

Ugh, he was going to fire the lot of them first opportunity.

His eyes drifted down to the laptop screen to see the message _Not such a clever boy_.

He’d fire the lot of them, and himself for good measure. “Shit, shit, shit.” He unplugged everything, although the damage had already been done.

“We’ve been hacked,” he said grimly. “Containment protocols, now. I want to know everything about this virus. Bond,” he lowered his voice. “Go to M, she’s at a committee meeting downtown getting raked over coals. I’ll send 006 along.”

“You send 006. I’m going after Silva.”

The poltergeist vanished.

“Bloody 00s. Troublesome even when they’re dead.” Q shut the laptop and switched to his own console and called Tanner.

“This isn’t a good time Q—”

“Silva’s loose,” Q said. “He’s loose, he’s deranged, he planned it all. And he’s coming for M. I’m sending 006 straightaway.” He snapped his fingers at R, “Call 006. Send him to M.” Back to Tanner he asked: “Any way things could be wrapped up until the security threat is dealt with?”

There was a moment of conference on the other end. Q heard M in the background, indignant: “I will not show my back,” and Tanner came back on the line with a tired, “No.”

“Standby then, backup is on the way,” Q said, and cut the line.

CCTV popped up on the viewscreen and he started a facial recognition program, even while he monitored with his own eyes. Since the virus was hidden in the map of the Underground, Q figured that would be the escape route. At rush hour, the crush of people would make finding one person much harder, but he called in the police for assistance anyway.

Too bad he couldn’t contact Bond, he thought. An earpiece would come in handy right about now…

…A train howled down the tracks coming straight for him.

“Oh good, there’s a train,” Bond said grimly next to him. “Hello.”

What the hell…

There was a door right there, but Bond couldn’t open it. “It won’t open,” Bond grunted, scrabbling ineffectively at the handle.

“Course it will. Put your back into it!” Q was not made for the field. The train barreled closer and Q had the hysterical thought that he was too young and cute to die in a dingy tunnel.

“You put your back into it!”

Q lurched over and shoved Bond through the wall. In the darkness of the tunnel, they heard the train shriek by, shaking the tracks. Q’s fingers were clenched into Bond’s damp lapels. The unnatural blue eyes glowed in the dark at him.

Q started giggling, a bit too high and terrified. “You’re a ghost, Bond. Walk through the damn walls.”

Rough hands on his shoulders, sliding up Q’s neck until tingling cold palms cradled his jaw and blunt fingers were in the hair at his nape, icy breath in his ear. “Q, go back now.” Bond’s voice was a little breathless, which made sense because he was dead and had no need for breathing anymore which made Q giggle harder and Oh God what did Q do why was he here was he dead—

“Go back Q. Tell Alec, Skyfall.”

The shove Bond gave him was as metaphysical as it was physical.

Q blinked, the brightness of Q-Branch blinding after the near absolute dark of the tunnels. Faces hovered over him, and he realized he was on the ground staring at the high, white-washed ceilings.

“I’m fine,” he said, batting hands away. “Someone bring me more tea, and a status update.”

“Should you go to Medical, boss?”

“Don’t be foolish. They’ll make me cut out the caffeine and try to strap me to a bed when I try to escape.”

Q clawed back up to his station, and shook off the irritating hands that tried to steady him and eyed his screens and updates. “Where the hell is he? 006, status.”

“Almost there,” the big Russian said.

“Good.” Q took a deep breath, steadied himself on his desk. “Reports have come in that Silva has disguised himself as a policeman.”

006 swore. “Of course he did. I’m here. Going dark.”

“One last thing, 006: Skyfall.”

Silence on the other end for a few heartbeats. Then 006’s voice, colder than Q had yet heard it: “Understood.”

Someone brought Q a chair and a cup of tea—the first hot cuppa he’d had at work since Bond had started haunting him—and he accepted both gratefully.

With his agents on the ground, there was nothing more for him to do except watch and wait until he got a call, one way or the other.

 

 

Bond hadn’t believed in ghosts when he was alive. He hadn’t a use for any kind of belief in the afterlife, because he knew he wouldn’t end up in any kind of paradise after death. No, if there was such a thing as Judgment, he’d be cast in a lake of fire and tormented in hell and it didn’t do to dwell on it.

When he was at university, a literature instructor had made them read Marlowe’s _Dr. Faust_. The play meditated on themes of life and death, salvation and damnation. He’d been too busy with Faust’s terrible life decisions to pay much attention to Mephistopheles. Since his death, Bond had had time to think about things, and suddenly the desperate melancholy of the demon’s description of hell made sense:

“ _Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed_

_In one self place, for where we are is hell_

_And where hell is must we be…_

_When all the world dissolves,_

_And every creature shall be purified_

_All places shall be hell that is not heaven_.”

To Bond, that description seemed melodramatic and overly poetic, nothing like the hellfire and brimstone he'd been warned about during enforced church attendances. Bond had been more of the mind of Dr. Faust, who doubted the evidence of his own eyes to proclaim hell a fable, a fairy tale for the gullible, a club to enforce morality.

He knew better now.

He hadn’t counted on lingering as a ghost after his death. He hadn’t counted on shouting into the void, being in the world and yet unable to engage with it. Marlowe was right. Bond didn’t need a lake of fire to torment him. He had the thousand small torments and loneliness of seeing the world go on without him, not being able to feel or touch or speak to anyone and have them reach back. He was in a hell of his own making, bound to MI6 in death as he was in life.

The frustration was enough to make him howl in rage. He watched 006 take on Silva in his place, watched the unctuous little shit Mallory suddenly become competent, saw Moneypenny cast off her new persona of desk jockey and become the field agent he’d admired back when he was alive.

The best Bond could do was freeze and distract and make aims shaky and bullets go wide. And perhaps he threw a few pens, lamenting that none of them blew up, but they contributed to the overall chaos. Q had told him that poltergeists often had more ability to interact with the world than regular ghosts, but Bond was still new. And his ability to freeze the Quartermaster’s tea solid really didn’t help much in a brawl.

Silva, snarling in frustration, abandoned the field. Bond wanted to go after him but he felt like he was moving in a pool of molasses. Tired, he found himself sitting next to Mallory on the floor for a few moments as the room settled. Alec had disappeared, Tanner was ushering a shell-shocked M out of the courtroom, and it was only with a supreme force of will that had Bond padding after them and sliding into the back of the sedan before M.

The car sped off before Tanner got in.

Alec peered at his passenger in the backseat.

“Are you kidnapping me?” M asked.

“Sure,” Alec said. “That’s one way to think of it.”

M crossed her arms and harrumphed. Bond slumped against the seat, too tired to do much more than just be there.

“Fine,” M said. “But this stays between us. No one else.”

Bond watched Alec’s expression in the rearview. He’d rarely seen his friend perturbed over anything, but the agent’s fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel. Alec tapped his phone and put it on speaker. M rolled her eyes.

“Q? We’re going to need some help.”

“So much for my promising career in espionage,” Q muttered. Bond smiled at the posh tones. He rather thought he saw M smile just a tiny bit as well.

“None of your cheek, Quartermaster,” she said. “And 006, turn up the heat, it’s like the Arctic in this car.”

“Yes, ma’am,” chorused Q and the 00.

Bond closed his eyes. He might be in hell, but at least he had one person in his corner.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

“If you want plausible deniability, now’s the time to go somewhere else,” Q said.

Tanner gave him a deadpan look. He’d abandoned his jacket over a chair somewhere and had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. In short order, the man had met Silva, lost Silva, been forced to sit through a boring meeting with a shrewish minister, been shot at, and accidentally allowed his boss to be kidnapped by MI6’s most unstable problem child in the name of security. By the time Tanner reached into his messenger bag to pull out a beer, Q was looking at a man whose account of fucks to give was deep in the red.

“Want one?” Tanner asked.

“There’s more than one?” Q asked, not sure if he was scandalized or impressed.

Tanner peered into his bag. “I’ve got three bottles of beer and half a pack of cigarettes.”

“Hold that thought for a bit,” Q said.

“Suit yourself,” Tanner said, and used the edge of the desk to pop the beer’s cap off.

Q busied himself pulling up maps and plotting routes. As he worked, he knew that 006 and M would be switching cars and headed up north. Bond hadn’t explained what Skyfall was, but 006 seemed to know exactly what to do.

“It’s not a safehouse,” he murmured to himself. His fingers flew over the keyboard. “What or where is Skyfall?”

“Bond’s ancestral family estate,” Tanner said. “Up north in Scotland. Great bloody big house in the middle of nowhere.”

“…Bond is Scottish?”

Tanner’s eyebrows rose. “That’s your takeaway point?”

Fair enough. Q tried again. “It must be defensible.”

Tanner made an agreeable gesture with his beer. “For what good it does them. Everything was sold when Bond was KIA. Probably nothing there,” he said.

Q switched to satellite imagery one the main screen and dug into Bond’s files. “Knowing Bond, there’s probably a squirrel’s cache of weapons and C4 up there somewhere.”

Tanner snorted. Then looked inquiringly at the Quartermaster. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

Q didn’t pause his typing. “Only in passing.”

Tanner gave him a half amused, half suspicious once-over. “How passing?”

“Do you have a point, Tanner?”

“No.” Tanner swigged the last from the first bottle and fished out a second. “I mean, you are rather his type, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you had met him.”

Distract, distract, distract. “What route should we send Silva and company? I need to lay breadcrumbs for Silva to find.” Q asked.

“What are you doing?” a new voice asked.

Q’s stomach dropped through the floor. Gareth Mallory smiled rather vaguely, already up and about with his arm in a sling.

“Nothing,” Q said, trying to cast around for a plausible lie. “Just—”

“Laying a trail of breadcrumbs for Silva to follow,” Mallory said. “Good thinking. Send him the A9. It’s the direct route, and you can keep track of his progress through CCTV.”

Ah, well, that was unexpected.

“What if the PM finds out?” Q asked.

“Then we’re all buggered,” Mallory said with half a shrug, and left.

Q turned back to the viewscreen with slumped shoulders. “We’re all going to jail. I’m too pretty for jail,” Q said forlornly.

Tanner giggled. “For a spy, you’re a very bad liar.”

 Q sent them up the A9 and settled in for a long wait. Tanner went back up to his office, leaving Q in solitude. Q-Branch was quiet, with only the sounds of the evening crew shifting and murmuring outside of Q’s makeshift office.

Bond hadn’t been back, so Q assumed he’d either blinked out again, or, more likely, was shadowing M and 006 up north. He settled in with some personal research projects and prepared to keep vigil. He couldn’t see going home until the matter was settled one way or another. He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was going to go sideways.

 _Seer_ , Silva had called him. That was a new one. _Psychic_ , the internet had proclaimed. _Coping mechanism to deal with trauma_ , his childhood shrink had said. _Freak_ , according to the kids at school. On its own, the word _seer_ seemed ridiculous. Added in with _ghoul_ and _poltergeist_ , and Q could feel a new weight pressing down on his shoulders. It seemed like the word had meaning, responsibility. Power.

Q finally dropped into a rolling chair. Tanner had been nice enough to leave the last bottle of beer, and Q cracked it open now. After all, with charges of sedition, aiding in a kidnapping of one of Her Majesty’s most important assets, and running an illegal op on British soil on the table, he probably wasn’t going to be employed in the morning. Drinking on the job was the least of his current concerns. He propped his feet up on his desk and watched the trackers winding steadily northward.

There were only so many resources he could scramble without getting MI5 involved, but he found them. Medical, backup—they’d probably arrive too late, but something was better than nothing. Q tipped his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

 

007_Q_007

Bond had been floating listlessly, conserving his energy while Kincaid, 006, and M set booby traps around the manor house. Alec found Bond’s stash of C-4 explosives and a small weapons cache. Not enough for the full-scale skirmish about to happen, but when added to Alec’s own traveling stockpile and the odds and ends left in the boot of Bond’s old Aston Martin, they had a respectable little arsenal.

Silva and company arrived during the gloaming, the grey time before nightfall, when the temperatures went into freefall and the setting winter sun turned everything bland and colorless. Between night and day was the best time for creatures like them, Bond figured. He even felt a bit more connected to the world, a bit sharper.

Silva sent the mortals in first. Bond watched as they were taken down, one by one, with bullets and explosive traps. He was perversely proud of M’s lightbulb bombs. They were small, unassuming, and vicious—much like the woman herself. Bond’s utility was frustratingly limited, but he found that he could lurk with the best of them. He’d had practice stalking Q, and knew how to stay in the very edges of their vision, and when their instincts had them distractedly looking in his direction, Kincaid or Alec picked them off.

His utility with the second wave of insurgents, well, that was a different story.

Full dark brought a helicopter blaring rock and roll, an easy distraction from the things crawling on the ground below.

When Bond was a kid, he’d learned not to look too closely outside his windows at night. Old Kincaid’s stories of bog men, clooties, water spirits, and red caps had made sure that Bond was never inclined to sneak out at night. Which, in retrospect, was probably the point. There was something eerie about the wide, empty moors during the day that become utterly Otherworldly at night. To Bond’s childish imagination, the scrub and craggy rocks that he’d traipsed over and around just hours before were replaced by creatures lurking in the mists that rolled in and out.

“Best not acknowledge Them,” Kincaid would say. “Don’t look too close, and don’t stare them in the eye, else you might get Their attention.”

Kincaid’s wife, a short, round woman named Sinead, would follow up with: “Always be polite and never disturb the fairy rings.” Bond, an uppity little shit even then, had gleaned that these two people, with their rough hands and ability to predict Scottish weather and his own shenanigans, Knew Things and he’d be wise to listen. It had also made him feel like he was being let in on a secret over hot chocolate and biscuits.

Then one day, Bond was suddenly an orphan and shipped off to an old aunt with more money than sentiment. His aunt had little patience for childish musings and fears about things that might be under his bed or creeping through the garden.

Bond shook himself out of his nostalgia. In the end, he’d come full circle: from being afraid of things that go bump in the night in his youth, to _becoming_ the thing that went bump in the night for other people.

But perhaps the stories held more weight than Bond himself had known. Bond slipped out of the house during a lull in the action. Alec could handle the mortal assailants, but Bond rather thought it was his job to look to the ones who weren’t human.

Bond had on him the things he had when he died…which didn’t amount to much. He’d tossed his gun away and had been engaged with hand to hand combat. Bond hoped the knife he had strapped to his ankle would actually work and that he wouldn't just uselessly swipe it around. 

No matter. He knew the land, every nook and cranny of it. He slid through the darkness, looking for the eyes he’d only seen in his nightmares. Small, skittery, hissing things, with eyes that reflected the fire of the explosions Alec had triggered up by the house. They chittered at Bond, small hands with razor claws reaching for him. They were the things of his childhood nightmares. They were the things he imagined in dark wardrobes and in the space under his bed…

Actually, they were far more gross than scary, and Bond had no compunction whatsoever stomping on them. They squealed and crunched and howled and clawed at his pantlegs. He drop-kicked one that was the size of a rat he met once in Key West. It flew, shrieking, off into the darkness. He wasn’t sure where it went, only that it wasn’t chewing on him anymore and that was the desired result. Trust Silva, with all his talk about rats, to employ demonic little imps.

Bond heard rapid-fire gunshots and the whine of a helicopter as it crashed into the house. Bond, momentarily diverted, spun back around to watch his childhood home engulfed in flames along with— _his car. Silva had torched his car_.

“I always hated the house,” Bond muttered. “But destroying the car is just uncalled for.” Luckily, Bond had practice in being petty as shit, and he loped back off into the dark, already plotting revenge.

In the distance, where he knew the priest hole led, he saw the flicker of a flashlight and swore. If he could see it, so could anyone else looking for survivors. He kicked a few more imps for good measure on his way. He surprised a couple gunmen as he pelted over a hill and broke one of the men’s neck without thinking or stopping. He heard the other one give chase, so Bond skidded onto the ice in the middle of the lake. The surface of the ice cracked as the man followed him out.

The man leveled a gun at him, which made Bond instinctively freeze before he remembered he was dead. He grinned malevolently at Silva’s minion. If ghouls and ghosts and nightmares were real, he wondered about another story Sinead had told him at least once a summer. What was it again? About the lake…

“See where we are, James? All this running and jumping and fighting—even in death we cannot find peace. It’s exhausting.” Silva stood on the edge of the lake, looking irritated.

Bond shrugged and let out one long, sharp whistle, as though he were calling a dog. Or a horse.

 _Dinner’s ready_ , he thought. _Where are you_?

The ice began to crack under their feet. Bond whistled again, and something huffed nearby. He saw Silva roll his eyes and limp off into the darkness, but then Bond’s attention was on the gigantic horse that stepped onto the ice with him and the gunman. Bond had an eye for the finer things in life, and this horse was one of the most gorgeous he’d ever seen. Jet black with a white starburst peeking through its forelock, its coat gleamed in the moonlight. It tossed back silky, wavy mane and trotted without a care for the ice until it joined them in the middle of the lake. Snorting and prancing, even Bond was tempted to reach out and touch even though he knew he shouldn’t.

The mortal gunman, however, clearly hadn’t the benefit of growing up on folktales of gods and monsters. This monster was an effective one—gorgeous, mesmeric, and lethal. The horse playfully pranced around them, snorting and tantalizing. The man’s gun dropped to point at the ice as his other hand reached to tangle into the mane of the gorgeous horse.

The horse’s demeanor changed immediately. The playfulness and soft equine huffing sounds disappeared. The large, liquid eyes gleamed red and the horse’s lips pulled back in a snarl full of canine fangs. All that soft mane turned into tangled seaweed, wrapping around the man’s wrist up to the elbow. The horse lunged, fangs sinking into the juncture between the man’s neck and shoulder. He didn’t have time to scream.

Blood sprayed on the ice and both horse and man vanished into the inky depths. Bond skittered back from the edge of the broken ice, swearing. He might be a poltergeist, but he wasn’t sure that he couldn’t become that thing’s idea of dessert and Bond didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

 _Each uisge_ , they were called. They were the lake-born equivalent of the kelpie: malevolent water spirits that would shapeshift into beautiful men, women, or horses to lure their victims into the water to eat. Once it had been conventional wisdom that every stream, river, and lake had at least one such monster lurking within.

 _They’d been right_ , Bond thought. He set his eyes on the chapel and hoped he wouldn’t arrive too late.

 

Q_007_Q

Fire and ice. Q opened his eyes and wondered if he’d accidentally astral-projected himself into hell. Well, if hell was a frosty moor in what looked like Scotland. Beyond a half mile of dark scrub and gleaming shards of broken ice on a roiling lake, a house was on fire. Behind him, door flung wide open, was a Reformation-era chapel. With its cold, cheerless stone and thatched roof, it could be mistaken for a barn if it wasn’t for the gritty stained glass and rows of pews leading up to a simple, half-rotten altar.

If this was sacred ground, Q thought, then it was only so in the most technical of senses.

He shivered and ducked inside. He stepped over Silva’s body, avoiding a puddle of blood. The ravaged face still bore traces of rage and annoyance, like death had come upon Silva at an inconvenient time. Q moved forward slowly towards two figures huddled only a few paces away.

Bond was as solid as Q had ever seen him. Water dripped off the tip of his nose and he looked damper than usual, but he clutched M like a lifeline.

“I got something right,” the Dragon Lady of MI6 murmured (and only now did Q wonder if the nickname was more literal than he’d thought). Then she was still.

The deceased 00 agent crumpled. He didn’t howl or show his grief in the hundred ways most people would, but Q felt it like a hammer to the gut.

M sat up.

Her body remained motionless in Bond’s arms, but the spirit, at once the M who Q had known and also a woman much younger and more vibrant, sat up and rolled her shoulders. She looked at her ghostly hands and then at a shocked Q and Bond.

“Q. Where did you come from?” she asked Q.

“Q-Branch,” Q said, faintly. Bond looked up as though seeing him for the first time.

M grunted and gave him a gimlet-eyed stare. “Always knew there was something uncanny about you,” she muttered.

M carefully extricated herself from Bond and her own body, batting at Bond’s hands until he let go. “That’s quite enough, 007. You’ve had plenty of time to wallow, I expect.”

Bond gaped. “What? You’ve been dead less than a minute.”

M narrowed her eyes at Bond. “That’s not what I meant. In any case, my job is finished, but you’ve left things half-done, as usual.”

The chapel’s doorway began to glow. The three of them looked at it. M got to her feet and tugged her jacket straight.

“I’m sorry,” Bond said.

M moved to the glowing door. She looked back at them both with a droll expression. “How many times do I have to tell you that regret is unprofessional?”

Q touched Bond on the arm. “If you’re going to move on, this is your chance. You can go with her.”

“No,” Bond said, quietly. “That door isn’t for me.”

“No, it isn’t. Not yet,” M agreed. Then she smiled at them, at once younger and older, wiser and more reckless. Q had the sense that M in her heyday had been a firebrand to rival Bond. “Do your job, 007. And you, too, Quartermaster,” she said, more gently this time.

She walked through the door, and disappeared, taking the light with her.

In the dark chapel, the most infamous 00 agent vanished, too.

Miles away, Q woke up in his desk chair. His head was pounding, and he had the feeling he’d lost something of immeasurable value.

His mobile phone rang. Tanner.

“Trevelyan reported in,” the man said, without preamble. “Silva has been neutralized, but M is dead.”

Q pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes until spots danced across his vision. “It’s going to be a long night, then. What do you need from me?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments and encouragement! One more chapter to go to wrap this thing up *evil grin*


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond is off wallowing in misery somewhere on the astral plane, and Q is determined to drag him back whether he likes it or not. (He kinda likes it)

 

 

Q refused to believe that he was moping. He was entirely too busy to mope. Moping was for normal people with normal lives. Or angsty teenagers after their first breakup. Which he wasn’t. So. He wasn’t moping.

“You’re moping.” Eve Moneypenny set her tray down opposite of his without invitation.

“I’m not.”

“You’ve been staring at your tea without moving since I got here.”

“I’m waiting for it to cool down.”

Moneypenny fixed him with The Stare that she uses on recalcitrant agents, public officials, and M. “You’ve spent your entire working career here complaining that the tea is never hot enough.”

She started peeling an orange with her fingernails, piling the fragrant bits in front of her. “So,” she said, ostensibly focusing on peeling a long, spiral strip of rind. “Tell me who broke your heart, so I can go shoot them.”

Q finally drank cold tea to keep from laughing at the irony of that statement. But the mirth might have shown because she was fixing him with a more puzzled and alarmed version of The Stare.

“Q,” she whispered. “You didn’t kill someone, did you?”

“No!” he whispered back. “Why would you even say that?”

“Oh good,” she leaned back and resumed her work with the orange. “I was worried I’d have to help hide a body. It can’t be worse than that, so spill.”

“It’s not important.”

“It’s upset your tea drinking habits. I heard R say the other day that you seem to prefer iced tea lately and seemed to think that England would fall if such a barbaric custom continued.”

Q sighed. “Fine. I had this…friend. I met him, he seemed annoying at first, but we hit it off.”

Moneypenny gave him half the orange. “To prevent scurvy,” she said. “Continue.”

“And then, some shit happened. And I haven’t seen him since. I don’t _think_ it was my fault.”

And that was the crux of it, Q thought. He kept remembering the look of sheer devastation on Bond’s face the last time he saw him. There wasn’t anything more he could have done to prevent the whole tragedy, and heaven knew he’d spent time over the last month thinking about it from every angle. He knew the poltergeist hadn’t moved on, because he hadn’t gone with M. He’d just _gone_ somewhere and never bothered to come back.

Q had even stopped staying into the wee hours of the morning in Q branch, waiting for a spirit who never showed up.

“He ghosted you,” Moneypenny said.

This broke Q out of his morose reverie. “What?”

“Ghosted. You know, when someone stops texting you back and just disappears instead of ending the relationship like a grown up.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s…weirdly appropriate. I just didn’t really expect it from him. Although, with his record, I suppose I should have.”

Moneypenny’s gaze sharpened. She stopped chasing a cherry tomato around her chef’s salad. “Record? Do I know this asshat? And are you sure that shooting him wouldn’t help? I could stab him a little, if you prefer.”

“What’s the difference between a little stabbing and a normal stabbing?” Q asked, a bit wary. “You know what, no, don’t answer that. I’m not a field agent for a reason. I prefer revenge through more electronic methods.”

Moneypenny grinned. “Well, if he isn’t a dead man yet, then he’s going to wish he were,” she said.

Q started and stared at her. The world slowed down for a moment and went gray around the edges as his brain whirred like a lock tumbler clicking into place. “What did you say?”

“If he’s not a dead man yet, he’s going to wish he were?” she repeated.

Q bolted down the rest of his cold tea— _gross_ , he thought—said a quick “Thanks, Eve,” then sprinted out of the commissary. He needed data: maps, weather forecasts, and a fair bit of math. And to hack some foreign agencies.

 

(6 hours later)

“Shit. I need to get on a plane. Bloody hell.”

But he had a destination in mind and now that he had it, the impulse to drop everything and leave immediately felt exactly like the obsessive impulse to connect to wifi after a whole weekend without.

 

(2 hours after that)

Q pounded on the door until it was ripped open. Moneypenny had a gun in one hand, but she didn’t need it because the expression on her face was enough to kill a man permanently dead.

“For fuck’s sake, Q. What?”

“I need your help. Quick. Pack a bag, we’ve a flight to catch.”

“Again, I say: For fuck’s sake, Q. It’s 2am.”

“I’ve already sorted everything, including your leave. Chop chop. We don’t have much time, and I need you to come with me. You need to come for you, too.”

She sighed. “That doesn’t make sense. If you weren’t so cute, I’d shoot you.”

Q smiled thinly. “And we come full circle. Shift your arse, Moneypenny.”

 

Q_007_Q

The Acıbadem International Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, looked more like a posh hotel than a hospital, and for some reason Q thought it entirely appropriate, all things considered.

He strode into the lobby of the intake and summoned up the most charming smile he was capable of, considering that his hands were still shaking after the 4-hour flight from London. Moneypenny stalked beside him silently. She hadn’t said a single word to him since she found out their destination. If Q wasn’t so strung out on anticipation and terror, he’d care more. Probably. If he was right, and the tug in his gut said he was, she’d get over it soon enough.

He leaned over to chat up the receptionist, spinning a tall tale about visiting a friend, and he showed her his phone. Moments later they were being ushered up by a resident doctor.

“Q,” Moneypenny said. “Why are we here?”

Q took a deep breath, anticipation humming like electricity in his veins. He nodded at the resident—young, pretty, still full of idealism—and opened the door. “This is why.”

He ignored the shocked sound Moneypenny made and stalked forward. Bond, James fucking Bond, lay on the bed, hooked up to machines that beeped steadily. The man looked less alive now than when he was a ghost, and he somehow managed to look tired and forbidding even while unconscious. Of course, the EEG cap didn’t help the image much.

But he was alive, gloriously alive, and as much as Q was relieved, he was also _pissed as hell_.

“I have to call this in,” Moneypenny said numbly.

“Please do,” Q said. “But do it outside, because I have words for this arsehole.”

Blinking rapidly and looking like she’d just been hit with a shovel, she complied, shutting the door after her.

Q dropped his messenger bag on the floor and snatched the chart at the foot of Bond’s bed. He flicked through it, his rudimentary Arabic picking up enough to get a gist of the readings. Found unconscious and near death on the bank of the river with GSW and no identification. He hadn’t woken up since. They had recorded some very high levels of brain activity, but instead of waking up, the effort seemed to wear him out and he would be quiet for days afterward. But the past month had been a stubborn pattern of barely any activity at all. It had bamboozled the local medical community and—here, Q grinned—Bond was now the proud subject of a class study for the medical school and a fun experiment for the psychologists on staff.

He dropped the chart and stomped up to the head of the bed.

The machines beeped a little faster before leveling out.

“Yeah, it’s me, you bastard. And I know you’re awake and can hear me on some level. I’ve found you and I’m going to drag you back to England whether you like it or not. M was right. You’ve had plenty of time to sulk and wallow.”

Q waited for a response, and none being forthcoming, he sighed. Bond remained as still and quiet as before, the only sound in the room being the machines monitoring him and Q’s own breathing.

Q leaned over Bond. “James Bond,” he said.

The ghoul, the poltergeist, and the seer, indeed. Q had done a bit of reading on the plane. If there was more in his philosophy than he’d dreamt of, he wanted to know about it. Bond had come to him. That had to mean or count for something.

He wondered if M had known when she said that Bond wasn’t supposed to come with her, not just yet. Maybe something had been evident to her as a ghost that Q had missed.

How many times had he thought that Bond seemed unusually strong and present? Self-aware? Q had the sneaking suspicion that if he examined the spikes in Bond’s brain activity, he’d be able to match them with corresponding experiences of hauntings.

“James Bond,” he said. He put a hand on Bond’s forehead. “Time to wake—”

The ground shifted under his feet. The hospital faded, and Q found himself on a sandy beach, sun beating down on his head.

“—up,” he finished. He appeared to be alone, but Q spotted a nearby dive bar. Of bloody course. Q slipped and slid through deep sand, swearing as it got in his shoes.

“Did you have to imagine the sand so clearly?” he called, trudging into the bar. A man sat at a stool, a half empty bottle of whiskey in front of him. Q sat on the stool next to him.

Bond held a half empty tumbler of whiskey, but he wasn’t drinking it. There was a scorpion sitting on his knuckles, and the two of them seemed to be in the middle of a stare-down, before Bond slowly tipped the glass to his lips. He never lost eye contact with the scorpion, even as Q stopped breathing in horror. Bond finished the glass, tipped the scorpion gently to the counter and trapped it under the glass. It waved its pincers angrily and banged on the walls of its glass prison.

“That was the stupidest thing I’ve seen all week, and I have a minion who weaponized the breakroom toaster for no good reason.” Q pressed his hands against the woodgrain of the bar to keep them steady.

Bond uncapped the bottle and took a swig. “Why’re you here, Q?”

“I’m your quartermaster,” Q said. “It’s my job to bring home all my agents in one piece. Even the irritating ones who disappear without so much as a by your leave. Did you know that all the cool kids call that ‘ghosting’ these days?”

Bond cracked a smile. “Well, I am dead, Q.”

“No, you’re stubborn and self-destructive and languishing in a self-imposed coma. Probably someday soon get yourself killed. But not today. Come on.” He got off the stool.

“No.”

“What?”

“No. I’m not going back with you.”

“Why ever not?”

“Silva.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t want to be him,” Bond said. “Surely, you noticed the similarities between us.”

Q got back on the stool. “Well, he wouldn’t stop nattering on about it, so it was hard to miss. But you and Silva differ in one major way.”

“Enlighten me.”

“No one came for Silva,” Q said. “He was betrayed, and no one came for him. No one thought to, no one was brave enough, no one cared enough. He might have been out of line, but no one deserves that kind of cruelty. Not him. Not you. And M paid for that mistake. Perhaps even rightly so.”

Q could see the tension in those muscular forearms as Bond tightened his grip on the bottle. “Don’t say that.” Bond’s voice was hard.

“Too late,” Q said. “I did, and I’m not sorry.” He looked at Bond, gentled his tone. “We have our orders, 007. Incidentally, we haven’t gotten around to filling that call sign yet. Do you want it back, or not? She told us to get to work, and I’m not really one to ignore orders.”

The two of them sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Bond reached over the bar to retrieve another glass and poured a measure for Q.

“I don’t want to come back wrong like Silva did,” Bond said.

“I won’t let that happen.”

“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

Q turned to him and waggled his eyebrows, a silent _try me_.

“Please,” Q said. “You must be terribly bored by now, living in your head with your pet scorpion.”

The TV mounted on the wall behind the bar flared to life. They saw Moneypenny’s concerned face as she discovered Q out cold, slumped across Bond’s torso. She yelled for a doctor.

“I probably could have arranged myself better than that,” Q said, making a heroic effort not to be mortified and failing. “Maybe sat in the chair first.”

“At least then you could have pretended to be asleep.”

“Definitely would have been more comfortable.”

“That is debatable. I’ve been told I’m very comfortable to sleep on.” Bond grinned.

“Sod off. We’ll be lucky to escape now, what if they think your coma is catching? You know that you’re a favorite mystery to half the Turkish medical community as it is.” Q propped his chin on the palm of his hand and stared morosely at the TV.

“Am I really? That’s appalling.” Bond poured another measure into Q’s glass. Apparently, his dream bottle never emptied.

“Mm-hm. And your resident doctor is cute. If you’re into cute.”

Bond side-eyed Q while they watched the emergency team pick up Q’s body and put him on a stretcher. “I like cute.”

“Oh, well then. Um. That’s her.” Q gestured at the screen. “Feeling the will to live yet?”

Eyes bluer than the sea studied Q. “Getting there.”

Q finished his drink. Held out a hand. “007.”

Bond took it. Smiled, so that the lines around his eyes deepened. “Q.”

“Have you made up your mind, then?” Q asked.

Bond neatly hooked a foot around Q’s barstool and bodily pulled the boffin to him. It didn’t take much, with Bond’s superior strength (or perhaps, just because they were in Bond’s own world and thus playing by his rules), for Q to find himself straddling the agent’s lap.

“Oh,” Q said, a little breathlessly. Bond’s face was the picture of mischief. “Oh, you’re going to drive me batshite every chance you get, aren’t you?”

That wasn’t quite what he meant to say, but it was hard to think with an attractive, infuriating agent brushing his nose along Q’s cheekbone and murmuring suggestively into his ear: “All right, Q. Take me home.”

Q’s hands cupped either side of Bond’s face and pulled him back from nuzzling Q’s hair. Bond’s hands—warm now, getting warmer—steadied them both, so no one fell off the barstool, and precarious as it was, Q knew Bond wouldn’t drop him. Q pressed his own forehead to Bond’s, prayed that for all his bravado he knew what he was doing, and pulled on the lifelines connecting them both to the outside world.

“See you on the other side, Bond.”

 

Q_007_Q

Bright light burned through his brain like a red-hot poker, but Q knew that he wasn’t lucky enough to be dead. Instead, he rolled over to the side of the bed in which he’d been placed and was violently ill into a washbasin he managed to snag just in time.

Really, today was not shaping up to be one of his best days.

When he finished throwing up what seemed like every meal he’d ever eaten during the last year or so, he rolled over onto his back, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyeballs.

The door opened, and there were footsteps. Q cracked one eye over. She was standing with her back to the door, arms crossed. She looked like all kinds of varying degrees of Not Happy.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine.” Q’s voice was croaky and sounded like he was 80. He cleared his throat and sat up, wondering where his glasses ended up.

Moneypenny crossed the room and held them out.

“Thank you.” He said. The world came back into focus, and Moneypenny’s shades of Not Happy coalesced into one uniform shade of Imminent Homicide.

“Mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Ah.” Q took his glasses off, polished them. “No? I had a hunch and decided to follow through.”

“A hunch.” She stared at him, unblinking, like one of his cats stared at toy mice it wanted to rip apart for the catnip. Q winced.

“Look, I had a hunch and checked it out. And I brought you because I really shouldn’t be gallivanting around the world by myself because that’s a security risk and also because you felt responsible for killing the infamous 007. Might as be the one to help resurrect him from the dead.”

“Oh yeah, so far, so obvious, thanks. What I want to know is how you knew.”

“Intuition,” he said. “And a realization that my predecessor was rather less than thorough. After Silva, I like to make sure that the dead are dead, and the living are brought home.”

It was the truth, at least partially. He couldn’t very well tell her that he saw dead people, in any case.

Speaking of: “Bond?”

“He’s awake,” Moneypenny’s suspicion was back full force. “Almost took out an orderly, managed to rip out an IV, and as soon as they pulled the breathing tube out, started asking for you. I didn’t know that you knew him.”

“It’s complicated,” Q said, sliding off the bed and trying out his feet. They stayed on the floor, which stayed steady, and that was good. Excellent. “I’m a little surprised he remembers.”

“Mm-hm.” She eyed him warily, but Q knew how to look innocent and innocuous as a Catholic school boy in church. What was the point of being skinny as a rail and possessing big green eyes and a mop of messy hair if he couldn’t use it all to make people underestimate him?

He blinked those big green eyes at her now. “Can I see him?”

“Considering that M is sending a private plane down to collect all of us, I’d say sure. And be careful what you ask for.”

 

Q_007_Q

(Epilogue: 4 months later)

Another day, another drop. Q’s huge anorak was more than enough to hide the small gun case in his possession. It was just passed lunchtime on a Wednesday, and the museum was almost empty as Q made his way through the exhibits.

He dropped down on one end of a bench. “You never did tell me honestly what you think about this painting,” he said to the man at the other end.

Bond huffed. It was as close as Q had ever heard him get to a laugh. “I told you I saw a bloody big ship,” he said. “Were you expecting some flowery art-drivel?”

“Considering that your next assignment requires you to go undercover as a broker of stolen Iraqi artifacts, a little practice can’t hurt.”

“Really?”

Q grinned. “No, I lied. That one goes to Edward. He pulls off the pedantic art-geek look far more effectively than you do.”

“If you say so,” Bond said.

Q shuffled closer until their shoulders were almost touching and he passed over the case. “Your palm-coded gun, a radio, and—”

“An exploding pen?” Bond ignored the gun entirely in favor of the handsome pen nestled in the case.

“What? No,” Q frowned. “Why on earth would I give you a pen that might explode in your hand or pocket?”

“Tradition, Q,” Bond said, mournfully. “Those pens were iconic.”

“They were an unnecessary safety hazard,” Q said primly. The agent next to him deflated, his perfect posture ruined by slumped shoulders.

“Does it do anything?” Bond asked, finally.

“It writes beautifully,” Q said. “And if you twist the cap two clicks to the right it will inject a lethal dose of snake venom. Don’t prick yourself.”

“Why would I? I have you for that these days and you’re pretty good at it.”

Q rolled his eyes to the ceiling. He handed over the envelope. “Your documents and travel details,” he said. “You leave tonight.”

Bond tucked the envelope away and leaned over. “Do we have time for lunch?” he asked.

Q closed his eyes and considered all the current projects and missions. None of them were hot at the moment, although he rather felt that 004’s stint in Cairo was about to blow up over the next day or so. Hm. No, maybe sooner than that.

“I can make time,” he said. “Or we can go back to mine. I still have our leftovers from Monday.”

“Excellent plan.” James bond stood up, offered a cordial smile that sparked hotter in his eyes. “Q.”

“007.” Q watched him go, smiling faintly.

“That’s a terrible idea,” said a familiar, cranky voice. “When I said to do your job, I didn’t mean to literally _do your job_.”

Q jumped. M—the old M, Olivia Mansfield M—glared at him from the spot Bond had just vacated, but it didn’t look like her heart was truly in the ferocious expression.

“I thought you were gone,” Q said. “I saw you pass on.”

M shrugged. “Doors aren’t one-way, Q.”

She looked like he remembered, a combination of the old woman he’d known, overlaying the younger firebrand he’d just glimpsed.

“Now,” she said. “Pay attention. What do you know about a man named Sciarra?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments! They are always appreciated. :)
> 
> ~Acıbadem International Hospital is a real place, and according to online reviews it's very, very nice. So, you know, if you're ever shot off a bridge in Turkey...


End file.
